One of the experiences which helped wean me away from the comfortable liberalism of my youth was walking through the streets of a post-industrial valleys town in South Wales, not far from where I grew up. Passing the proud edifice of the Workingmen's Hall, I had to step off the pavement into the road to avoid a huge pile of mouldering books left out in the rain. The hall's library - politics, economics, literature - by which generations of coal miners and industrial workers were self-educated to an astonishingly high standard - was being thrown out by its elected committee in order to make way for the installation of slot machines.